December 25, 1952. I was three years old. A toy like this was under the tree:
It was a wonderful gift.
Other boys my age were getting tricycles. Tricycles could go faster but they were designed to go on sidewalks and on the concrete floors of one-car garages that were being built in tract houses in postwar America. I didn't want to be fast. I wanted to be strong, like grownups who drove tractors in the fields around me.
My pedal tractor had thick tread on the rear wheels. It could push through soft mud at the bottom of puddles in the dirt after a rain. That is something one learns about by doing. The dirt next to a puddle would be firm, but the dirt under a puddle might be soft. I sought out mud puddles. You don't really know how soft that mud is until you go into the puddle. Sometimes you got fooled and the tread of the rear tires pushed against soupy mud. The more you pedaled, the deeper you scooped out the mud under the tires. You got stuck. That was good information for a three-year-old to learn.
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| Stock photo. Not me. But like this. |
The tractor was play for me, but I learned something useful about mud, about calculating risk when looking at puddles, and about consequences. Sometimes I would need my cousin to help me pull the tractor out of the mud. It was good to have a friend and neighbor. Our pants, shoes, and socks would get muddy, so we got more lessons about consequences when our mothers saw our clothes.
I have grown-up John Deere tractors now. Every year or so I still get stuck in mud when I try to mow cattails and blackberries along ditch lines. The ground looks firm and dry on top, but just underneath it is soggy. If you get too close to the ditch all of a sudden you realize the tractor tires are in soft mud and are digging a hole. You are stuck. You need a neighbor, another tractor, and a chain to pull you out.
The tractor in the photo is a restored version of the 1950s tractors that John Deere licensed. It is exactly what I remember. More recent models have all sorts of plastic parts, but this one is all metal except for the tires. This restored one is available for $1,250, plus $200 shipping. I could own this again. I am not going to do it.
Another gift my parents gave me was the experience of cleaning up after their deaths. Each of them had stuff they used every day--mostly clothes--that we took to Goodwill. That was easy. The hard part was the keepsake items, the things that were their sentimental memories, things we found up on high shelves or in storage boxes. Those keepsakes had done their job for them. Many of them were meaningless to us.
I could buy the tractor and hope someday that a grandchild wanted to play with it, but realistically it is just a keepsake, a thing that triggers a pleasant memory. It would be another thing underfoot now, then a future nuisance for someone to deal with. I don't need more things. I need fewer things.
The keepsake is my memory. I have a pleasant memory of the shiny tractor on that Christmas morning whenever my tractor gets stuck in soft mud in cattails next to a ditch.
REQUEST: I would welcome reader comments about special Christmas gifts or Christmas memories that readers might share. Write them as a comment or send them to me to work up into a guest post: peter.w.sage@gmail.com
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10 comments:
It's your "Rosebud" sleigh, Peter. You should buy it. :)
One of the finest holiday gifts I remember was on a cold November night in 2008, when I learned that Barack Obama would be our next president – someone intelligent, articulate, dignified and who had actually read the Constitution he would be swearing to protect and defend. Such a contrast to before and after!
It is interesting that material objects gain in value, monetarily and otherwise, relative to their age.
It's not entirely rational, (Really, Spock?) but I imagine has something to do with the hoarding impulse, a mental disorder. The ADAA puts it this way:
"People hoard because they believe that an item will be useful or valuable in the future. Or they feel it has sentimental value, is unique and irreplaceable, or too big a bargain to throw away. They may also consider an item a reminder that will jog their memory, thinking that without it they won’t remember an important person or event. Or because they can’t decide where something belongs, it’s better just to keep it."
Anyway, while not a Xmas gift, my first electric guitar that I bought with lawn mowing money and traded away for another, is now considered a classic, with examples going for over $1000. While I can suppress it easily, there is still a twinge of regret.
Having undue reverence for the past is, of course, Regressive.
I remember getting as a present the Life history of WWII--wonderfully illustrated with photos that had appeared in the magazine. It came at an age--I was about 11, I think--when I was just beginning to become aware of a wider world. Because I was born in 1939, I had no idea what was going on, especially since my father had been turned down on medical grounds when he tried to enlist at age 38. It left a deep impression on me.
My wife tells me she lived on a paved road and at age 5 got that same tractor. She HATED it and would have loved to have gotten a tricycle instead. Male, female difference? She also had NO desire to go through any mud puddles and get dirty.
My Jewish family celebrated Christmas partially. We didn’t have a tree, but we put up Christmas stockings on the fake fireplace in our living room. The fireplace had fake logs with red lightbulbs behind them and little metal pinwheels suspended above the bulbs, which would spin in the convective updrafts caused by the heat of the bulbs, giving a very approximate Impression that there was a fire burning.
There was no chimney, of course; just a smooth flat surface at the top. This was puzzling to a four-year-old child. I came up with a theory about how that upper surface was really a secret door that Santa could open up from above to deliver the toys. The engineering mind was starting to boot up.
It’s sad that in this age, politics will even intrude into a discussion about cute Christmas memories. We would be better off if it didn’t.
Wouldn't you know someone would criticize a political observation being made on a political blog. Let's not forget that it was so-called conservatives that incorporated Christmas into their culture war.
And Merry Xmas to you too…
Michael, I still get warm fuzziness when recalling that morning.
Best Christmas? My Dad's business had gone broke the summer before, we had moved to a different town, money was very tight. My younger brother and I had gone to bed Christmas Eve not expecting much beyond some fruit in the Stockings Mom had us hang on the mantle. Next morning, as I came down the stairs, there were two shiny new Montgomery Wards bicycles parked in front of the tree, and we spent that morning riding them all around Crescent City. I
never did find out how yhey did it, Dad wouldn't talk about it.
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